Constantly Moving the Bookmark

Rachel commutes to London everyday on the train. A glitch in the transit system causes the train to slow slightly, every day, at the same spot in the tracks. A spot that coincidentally allows Rachel to glimpse the house in which she lived with her ex-husband. A house she loved because of its proximity to the tracks. A house where her ex now lives with his new wife and baby. This fact causes Rachel a lot of pain and she has learned to find solace in the cans of premixed gin and tonic available at the corner convenience store. Something she has started to do more and more often and eventually the habit results in the loss of her job. Despite this, Rachel continues to ride the train every day, not only to see her old house but also to keep up with the young couple that live a few doors down. She has never met them so imagining their names to be Jess and Jason. Rachel has also contrived quite a fantasy life for this young couple … they are of course deliriously happy and have the perfect life Rachel does not … until one day Rachel looks out the train window only to see “Jess” kissing another man. The next day “Jess” is missing.

Rachel knows that she should go to the police with the information about what she saw, but in her more and more frequent state of inebriation would they even believe her? She goes – they don’t – and Rachel begins her own (rather inept) investigation into what happened to Megan, which Rachel now knows is “Jess’” real name.

This book has received much hype and with the constant comparisons given to Gone Girl I was looking forward to reading it. I don’t think it lives up to the hype. Is it a good story? It is. Is it a good mystery? It’s that too. Was I surprised at what happened to “Jess”? I was. So why am I not raving about this book? Well, quite frankly, because I didn’t like Rachel. She annoyed everyone in the book, so in turn, I found her very annoying too. I was hard pressed to feel any anxiety about what she was going through or apprehension about what might happen to her because she spent the whole book making really bad decisions. Decisions she would argue with herself about then decide they were bad and then go ahead and follow through anyway. I’m giving the book 3 stars because it was not horrible and Rachel, quite by accident, does redeem herself by the end.